The significance of desire

Where does desire come into the picture? According to the position I am seeking to defend, a meaningful life is a desire-involving life. This could mean any number of things depending upon how narrowly or broadly we comprehend the notion of desire, and my starting point is the version defended by the atheist Richard Taylor in his seminal book Good and Evil (Taylor Reference Taylor2000) [Reference Taylor1970]). Taylor’s position suits my purposes at several levels. First, beginning with atheism allows me to avoid begging important questions as I move in the direction of theism – I am engaging with atheism rather than casting it aside in favour of theism. Second, however, Taylor’s position contains insights to be acknowledged and preserved; one such insight concerns the significance of desire for the question of life’s meaning. Finally, it exemplifies the kind of oppositional framework it is my purpose to expose and to replace.

The context for Taylor’s discussion is the immense difficulty in clarifying the notion of meaningful existence, the contrasting ease with which we can identify one which is objectively meaningless, and the eternal stone-rolling of Sisyphus as a paradigm case of such meaninglessness. Taylor is going to claim that our own lives are objectively meaningless in this sense, and he asks what could be added to such existence – human existence – to render it meaningful. He then presents us with two opposing and seemingly mutually exclusive options. According to the first response, the required meaning-conferring ingredient is to be found in something beyond Sisyphus and his stone rolling – perhaps the stones are going to be used to construct a beautiful temple which he can contemplate for all eternity or perhaps the real fruits of his labour are to be found beyond this earthly existence, if, say, he is united with God in heaven. Taylor’s atheism rules out this latter possibility. As for contemplation of the beautiful temple, he takes this to be just as futile as the eternal stone-rolling it was intended to replace, for watching a stone – or a pile of stones – is no less tedious than rolling them up and down a hill, and at least in the latter scenario one is actually doing something.

Taylor is all for keeping us on the move – for maintaining ‘our eternal struggle and unquenchable spirit’ as he puts it (Taylor Reference Taylor2000) [Reference Taylor1970], 321) – and this is where desire comes into the picture, for what is missing from the picture of objective meaninglessness as presented through the activity of eternal stone rolling is an insatiable desire on the part of the subject to be doing this and nothing but this forevermore. By contrast, if it is one’s heart’s desire to be so engaged, then a life of eternal stone-rolling is rendered meaningful, albeit at a purely subjective level (the world in itself remains objectively meaningless). Such is Taylor’s approach, and it involves claiming that, instead of looking for something beyond the subject in our quest for meaning, we are to look instead to something within her, something whose presence motivates her to engage in whatever she is doing with enthusiasm, interest, and perhaps even love. That is to say, we are to take seriously the idea that meaning is to be found at the level of desire, so that what makes the crucial difference is ‘our own wills, our deep interest in what we find ourselves doing’ (Taylor 2000) [Reference Taylor1970], 332). Taylor takes such a position to involve a conception of meaning which is incomparably better than one which involves reference to a permanent and lasting good at which all may aim, not simply because no such good exists, but because, even if it were to exist, its attainment would involve replacing ‘the nightmare of eternal and pointless activity [] with the hell of its eternal absence’ (Taylor Reference Taylor2000) [Reference Taylor1970], 331). He concludes that ‘[t]he meaning of life is [to be found] from within us, it is not bestowed from without, and it far exceeds in both its beauty and permanence any heaven of which men have ever dreamed or yearned for’ (Taylor Reference Taylor2000) [Reference Taylor1970], 330–334).

Desire, nihilism, and normativity

Taylor’s focus on will and struggle sounds rather Nietzschean, and Nietzsche himself can be understood to be addressing the problem of life’s meaning, albeit from a perspective which is anchored in our peculiarly modern predicament – one which presupposes the so-called Death of God and is tied up with the problem of nihilism.Footnote ⁶ It is unsurprising therefore that some contemporary Nietzsche scholars have interpreted this problem as a problem of desire, the idea here being that the condition of nihilism involves a kind of failure of desire.Footnote ⁷ Assuming for the moment that the notion of desire is to be comprehended along Taylor’s preferred lines, then the claim is that the condition of nihilism involves a failure to care about what we find ourselves doing, to be indifferent to life, to be going through the motions.

Some such theme can be discerned in Nietzsche’s writings; this raises the question of whether there’s a significant difference between the condition of nihilism and that of a depressed person, and there is, in any case, a more explicitly normative strand to Nietzsche’s thinking – one which takes the condition of nihilism to involve, not a failure to desire at all (whatever that could really mean) but rather, a failure to desire appropriately or properly. On this reading, the condition of nihilism is expressed in a kind of defective or misdirected desire, or as R. Lainier Anderson has put it on Nietzsche’s behalf – we moderns can no longer desire in the right kind of way (Anderson Reference Anderson2013, 159).

There is no such normative strand in Taylor’s scheme of things, no concession to the idea that our desires could be misdirected, and he seems committed ultimately to a conception according to which desire is reducible to an irrational and insatiable impulse or compulsion. It is irrational in the sense that the activities it motivates us to pursue are pointless; it is insatiable in the sense that it never gives out. Both these dimensions are made clear in Taylor’s Sisyphean version of the position, for we are asked to imagine that the gods ‘implanted’ in Sisyphus a ‘strange and irrational impulse’, that this impulse is on a level with a ‘substance that has this effect on his character and drives’, and that it is ‘persistent and insatiable’ (Taylor Reference Taylor2000) [Reference Taylor1970], 323).

Such a position fails to accommodate the complexity and variety of human desire; we are given no sense of how it is to be sustained in its complexity and variety, and there is no concession to the idea that at least some of our desires involve taking their objects to be good or desirable in some sense. Indeed, it is not difficult to relate the general picture Taylor paints – of a layer of subjective meaning being imposed upon an objectively meaningless reality – to that according to which the source of value is to be traced back without remainder to the desiring subject. David Wiggins sees an affinity between Taylor’s position and that of 20th-century ethical theory in its Continental and Anglo-Saxon variants (Wiggins Reference Wiggins1998 [Reference Wiggins1976], 95). He concedes that practitioners of the second of these kinds are renowned for their failure to say anything about such questions as the meaning of life and proposes in the light of the relevant affinities that Taylor’s position has a strong claim to be their ‘secret doctrine of the meaning of life’. What we have here, he continues, is the ‘sharp supposedly unproblematic distinction…between what we discover already there in the world – the facts, including the gods’ enforcement of their sentence – and what is invented or, by thinking or willing, somehow put into or spread onto the factual world – namely the values’ (Wiggins Reference Wiggins1998 [Reference Wiggins1976], 95).

Interlude

How do the themes I have presented bear on the question of atheism and its limits? I have made clear already that I am wanting to defend a theistic framework. However, I am also wanting to problematize the distinction between theism and its supposed antithesis – atheism. First, I identify as a naturalist and naturalists tend to be atheists. Second, however, I claim to be questioning the naturalist’s ‘presumption of immanence’, at least insofar as this is taken to exclude the transcendent. And finally, I have said that my approach involves building up to theism from an atheistic starting point. The aim here is to avoid begging important questions at the outset (for example, by presupposing the truth of theism), to engage atheistic or agnostic thinkers on their own terms, and to examine and to critique the relevant positions from this receptive and dialogical starting point. To return to the case of Taylor, one might conclude – as I have concluded – that there is an insight to be found in the connection he makes between meaning and desire, but that his conception of desire as an irrational impulse is problematic.

The atheist will respond that one can defend a more expansive conception of desire without bringing God into the picture, that bringing God into the picture is itself highly problematic, and that there are good reasons for insisting upon Nietzsche’s presumption of immanence. Such objections are familiar and prevalent, but they are open to dispute, and for the remainder of the paper I want to give a sense of how they might be challenged in the present context.

From Nietzschean nihilism to mystical theism

The starting point for my discussion is the theistic framework of the 13th-century medieval poet and mystic Hadewijch of Antwerp – a framework which, on the face of it, seems as far removed as could be from Taylor’s conception of reality as objectively meaningless and a ready target for Nietzsche’s anti-religious sentiments.Footnote ⁸ After all, what could it involve but supernatural suspicion, unnecessary obfuscation, and a dismal failure to commit to life in the here and now? As for Hadewijch’s mystical life more positively conceived, it is surely a perfect example of misdirected or defective desire. After all, she is motivated above all by a desire for God and would likely prefer contemplating that beautiful temple rather than actively engaging with the business of living in the here and now.

The first point I want to make is that it is no part of Hadewijch’s position that we are to bypass this life in favour of a life elsewhere, and no implication either that we should be inactive in this world. On the contrary, she makes quite clear that we should be actively engaged. However, the engagement in question is quite different from anything we get in Taylor or indeed Nietzsche, both of whom lend emphasis to the struggles of the solitary individual in the face of a meaningless world with little or no concession to our interactions with others. Hadewijch, by contrast, has others in the picture from the start, believing that we should be reaching out to them with care and compassion and nurturing the kind of receptivity which is a condition of such a response and without which we remain turned in on ourselves and incapable of love.Footnote ⁹

Granting the significance of such love to a properly meaningful life seems perfectly reasonable and it is certainly not the exclusive preserve of religious mystics. Martha Nussbaum takes issue with Nietzsche on this score, objecting that he operates with an ideal of strength which is appropriate to one who ‘insists on caring deeply for nothing that he does not control’ (Nussbaum Reference Nussbaum and Schacht1994, 60). There is, she concludes, ‘a strength in the willingness to be porous rather than totally hard, in the willingness to be a mortal animal living in the world’. She contrasts this with the attitude of one ‘who is determined to seal himself off from risk, even at the cost of loss of love and value’ (Nussbaum Reference Nussbaum and Schacht1994, 160).

Hadewijch is all for lending emphasis to our willingness to be porous risk-takers in the face of love and value. She believes also, however, that such receptivity can be the beginning of what it means to stand in authentic relation to God and that it is expressive of a fundamental desire to orient ourselves in this direction. According to this position then, we relate to God by reaching out to others with love, and Hadewijch takes this to involve entering the depths of God’s love or what she calls ‘the abyss of divine love’ (Hadewijch 1980, 56).

What does this mean? And how does this conception of the abyss relate to the more hellish variant at issue in Nietzsche when he talks of our straying through an infinite nothing in the face of God’s absence?Footnote ¹⁰ The abyss for Hadewijch – and for medieval mystics more generally – is a place of ravishment’, ‘of erotic encounter with the divine Beloved’ (Jantzen Reference Jantzen2003, 244). The Middle Dutch term for abyssFootnote ¹¹ is afgront; it is related to the German word Abgrund, and it brings connotations of ‘unfathomable, bottomless depths’ (Jantzen Reference Jantzen2003, 247). It represents, for Hadewijch, the unfathomable, bottomless depths of divine love, the ‘abyss of [God’s] nature’ (Hadewijch 1980, 56), but she uses the term to refer also to the human soul, understood in this context as the ‘true self’ rather than a disembodied Cartesian substance (Jantzen Reference Jantzen2003, 248).Footnote ¹² The following extract comes from one of her letters of instruction:

We have here a conception of the desiring self which is a world apart from Taylor’s reductive picture, and although Nietzsche’s own conception is more expansive – he allows, for example, that the self has mysterious depths and is concerned above all that our desires are appropriately directed – he does not think of the relevant depths in love-involving terms nor would he take them to be offering a gateway to God. On the contrary, he takes them to reveal a terrifying and awesome emptiness – the abyss into which we peer in the darkness of God’s death.

Nietzsche is, of course, wanting to salvage meaning in the face of this hellish abyss; his approach is at one with Taylor in this respect, and, like Taylor, he is trying to get us to the point where we can start caring about life in the here and now. Complexities and tensions notwithstanding – the idea that not all our desires are appropriately directed, some faltering concessions to a kind of transcendentalismFootnote ¹³ – we are left with a clear sense that the task at issue is that of trying, by a desperate feat of will, to love – and to make loveable – something inherently unloveable. The lingering sense of despair is both palpable and understandable and there are no gods to implant the missing desire.Footnote ¹⁴

There are no gods to implant the missing desire, but there is no God to make sense of the mystical framework at issue. So objects the atheist, and she might add that the move I am proposing – from nihilism to mystical theism – involves an instance of just the kind of false dichotomy I claimed at the outset to be wanting to transcend. After all, although Nietzsche’s conception of our modern predicament seems unduly and unnecessarily dark, the rival mystical position goes to the opposite extreme by taking as its exclusive focus the erotic encounter with the Divine Beloved. Either way, something important seems to be missing and we need a sensible middle ground, minus the addition of an illusory God.

Love and the limits of atheism

I agree that we need a sensible middle ground along these lines and that illusory gods should be no part of the picture. Yet I believe also that the kind of theism I have begun to outline on Hadewijch’s behalf can occupy this ground, and that it can help us to understand what it could mean for the transcendent to be revealed in the immanent rather than for these categories to be dualistically opposed.

How can this be so? First, it is no part of the mystical position at issue that everything is sweetness and light and that the darker elements of existence are to be ignored. However, they are situated within a framework which takes seriously the redemptive and transformative power of love – a power which, according to this position, cannot be constructed from our own wilful resources alone and which has its source in God. But why bring God into the picture? After all, one can acknowledge the significance of love to life without being a theist, as does Nussbaum and as does Iris Murdoch when, in an essay on the void, she proposes love as a remedy for desolation, telling us that ‘[h]ere anything may help, any person, any pure or innocent thing which could attract love and revive hope’ (Murdoch Reference Murdoch1992, 503). Murdoch takes this ‘new orientation of our desires’ to involve a source of motivation which has the power to lead us beyond despair – and indeed egoism – provided that we are suitably receptive. This is what it means for love to be born in our hearts, but Murdoch denies that it has anything to do with God.

Murdoch makes this denial, but she concedes that the dimension of reality to which we are responsive in this context – the good, the transcendent – takes us beyond what we can properly comprehend and cannot be pinned down as object to subject. By contrast, God, as she conceives him, seems eminently amenable to such treatment, for he is represented as an other-worldly personal being who resides above the world and mankind, albeit with the capacity to intervene with things, should he so choose.Footnote ¹⁵ I borrow some of this phraseology from the theologian Paul Tillich (Reference Tillich1957, 6) – who was a great influence on Murdoch and likewise rejected such a conception of God, albeit as a theist.

Hadewijch would agree that, as active lovers, we are relating to a dimension of reality which defeats our efforts to pin it down and comprehend it, and that it is misguided to objectify God as something out there in the beyond, utterly distinct from us and seemingly irrelevant to our interactions in the here and now. Rather, we are to take seriously the idea of a God who stands in a much more intimate relation to the self – a God who, in Grace Jantzen’s words, ‘will come only as love is born within us, only as we ourselves become divine’ (Jantzen Reference Jantzen2003, 262).

Such a position calls into question some of our ordinary conceptions of selfhood, for it suggests that, beyond a certain level of spiritual progression, we cannot and ought not to be distinguishing our selfhood by way of contrast with God’s activity within us.Footnote ¹⁶ It suggests also that the idea of a desiring self has deep theistic import, and that we relate to God at the level of desire. Not the desires which define our self-centeredness, but through a kind of loving desire which has its source in God’s infinite love, and which motivates us to love others in turn.

What would it be to take such a position seriously? It involves taking seriously the power of love, and I am suggesting that the question of whether we should be interpreting this power in theistic terms becomes rather more interesting and less obviously absurd once we move away from the idea that it would involve introducing into the picture the kind of being that Murdoch and Tillich are so eager to reject. The atheist might push back at this point and say that the theistic vocabulary is unnecessary, and that what we are really saying is that love is God rather than that God is love. Indeed, Ludwig Feuerbach – who insists upon this reversal – tells us that ‘he alone is the true atheist to whom the predicates of the Divine Being, – for example, love, wisdom, justice, – are nothing; not he to whom merely the subject of these predicates is nothing’ (Feuerbach Reference Feuerbach2008 [Reference Feuerbach1881], 18). Feuerbach appears to be conceding here to the significance of love (rather than God). Yet his reluctance to introduce God into the picture is motivated in large part by a wish to avoid introducing some further entity – as if God is ‘something besides love [] a being distinct from love []’ (Feuerbach Reference Feuerbach2008 [Reference Feuerbach1881], 45).Footnote ¹⁷ The worry is familiar (the objectification of God), but I have argued that one can avoid such objectification at no cost to God’s reality. What then do we lose by rejecting God’s reality? The answer from Hadewijch is that we lose love, and losing love is what Murdoch, Nussbaum, Feuerbach, and Hadewijch all take to be the road to desolation. And what is it to lose love? For Murdoch, Nussbaum, and Hadewijch, it is to seal oneself off from risk, to become totally hard rather than porous, to be a purely autonomous subject whose desires cannot draw upon an external source of value, to be in a place of darkness and despair with no hope of light, to be in the condition of Taylor’s Sisyphus prior to his redemptive injection. I have argued that there is more to a meaningful life than this, that something more is attainable if we are appropriately receptive, and that it is not outrageous to suppose that it could involve God.

Moving on

A lot has been left unsaid and unargued and some of the steps I have taken have been far too quick. But let me try to sum things up and point to some unresolved issues. I said at the outset that I am wanting to challenge a kind of oppositional thinking as it plays out in the context of thinking about atheism, theism, and the question of life’s meaning, and above all, to challenge the Nietzschean – and Taylorian – version of an immanentist position. Taylor’s position offers the purest form of such a position, for there is no God, no meaning, and any value is to be constructed without remainder from the resources of the desiring self. Such a position operates within familiar scientistic parameters; it is deeply problematic, but it gives rise to less radical alternatives, including those endorsed by my more sensible atheist disputants. I seek to defend a position in which the immanent and the transcendent are intertwined rather than dualistically opposed and I find a version of such a position in Murdoch. My Nietzschean justification for moving in this direction is that it involves a continuation of Nietzsche’s anti-oppositional agenda and an important case in point given his metaphysical focus. But where does this leave the Death of God? Am I suggesting that it is based upon a misunderstanding? Not exactly, for it has been central to what I’ve said that the problem of nihilism is an affective or practical problem and that what matters above all is that our desires are appropriately directed. The Nietzschean will say that they are inappropriately directed when directed towards God, but I have challenged this response and challenged the assumption that a theism along these lines can no longer be taken seriously. Nussbaum finds something overly wilful and controlling in Nietzsche’s stance and my mystic will say that such an attitude shields us from God – hence the importance of being receptive in the face of love. What she will deny, however, is that this problem is permanent, and she would agree with Murdoch that there is deep within us a source of motivation which is capable of being activated, albeit not from our own wilful resources alone.